Drinks, drive and being alive...

In college I worked as a bartender in the most hipster of all Orlando pseudo-dives.  As part of the opening staff, I was around to see the beautiful trailer the owner bought, all eight or so inches from the side, mounted to our wall.  It still had the windows and door intact, bearing only a few select bumper stickers to represent the camp in a way only bumper stickers can.  I remember the fresh wood-paneled bathroom walls, carefully branded with various images of Elvis throughout his career.  We had holiday lights strung across the room and back again, gently illuminating the 800 layers of lacquer drenched on top of doors repurposed as tables that ran along the stretch of the fairly narrow room.  This was my home for three years.

Despite seeing me through some of the most hilarious and most traumatic events in my life, I’ll never forget what it felt like to be in that room because that was where I really found myself… You might think that I’d have some great story to interject here about some night I got really drunk, but it wasn’t like that at all.  In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Although we had to weather a few months of hardly any business, we developed a cult-like following and soon we were the place to be.  My favorite night of all to work was on Fridays, when I was guaranteed to be in the weeds for at least five hours straight.

To be an awesome bartender, you should provide the following services in addition to the delivery of a decent drink:

• If you serve them, remember their name. Call them by name at least once a night so they know you remember it, preferably in front of other people so that they know that other people know that you know their name.
• If you’ve never served them before, make them feel like they have discovered the best place in town and by all means, do not forget their name.
• You must enjoy listening, though they may seem to bait you into being the conversationalist yourself.  When you’re working, keep talk about yourself to a minimum because people who aren’t on the clock are much more interesting than those who are.

All these things combined with fifteen drinks, their appropriate recipes, which goes with which and who they go to need to be right on the tip of your tongue at any minute.  When you’re working back there with someone else, you’re like a cohesive force that doesn’t end or begin — it just moves.  And in those moments, you can succumb to the weeds and just flow.  It’s the best high I’ve ever tried, and I grew up in Orlando so that’s saying something.

I ended my career behind the bar and chased that chaos for years in jobs that didn’t involve the sale of booze.  It wasn’t until last year that I finally found a similar bliss in my energy work.  At my highest, I was managing up to 50 energy projects.  This year I hope to achieve a new goal, even though it may not be to beat the number of simultaneous projects I carry.

One of these days I’ll post some of my personal program management worksheets for you to download if you’d like… Of course, the real secret to my deliverable-focused success is simple and totally unplugged: live in the moment.

If you’re present, you won’t miss it. If you’re listening, you’ll hear it.  If you’re looking, you’ll see it.  If you breathe it, you’ll live it.  And when you live it, you connect with it and instinctively give it all the things it needs to grow.

Stress doesn’t even enter into the picture when you just allow the moment to be what it is and do your best to move through each moment as it comes.  In fact, there’s a calm that comes when you allow yourself to be exactly where you are, doing exactly what you’re doing, that counteracts stress.

Keeping people happy in my current line of work isn’t too different from my bartending years when it comes down to the basics.  Treating each person as a valuable, contributing member and remembering what’s important to them keeps everything moving smoothly.  Treating myself the same way gives me the chance to be who I am, where and when I am, allowing me to achieve great things without the stress and panic of undone deeds.

I’m so grateful for the years I spent in that little bar, because they taught me how to be my best in spite of seemingly unending demands.  As a result, I’m able to give my all to my energy work today, garnering frequent compliments from teammates who are regularly astounded at what I’ve been able to accomplish by myself.  It’s really not that hard when you’re in the moment, but I’d never tell them that… It’s much too cool to let them go on about how awesome I am.